


The Tale Of The Deduction Game

by afteriwake



Series: The Family Business [19]
Category: Elementary (TV), Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-01
Updated: 2014-05-01
Packaged: 2018-01-21 10:56:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1548158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afteriwake/pseuds/afteriwake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock is bored one morning while he's visiting his cousin and he suggests they play the deduction game. Holmes obliges and even lays a wager on it, but things don't turn out exactly how Sherlock expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Tale Of The Deduction Game

**Author's Note:**

> I had so much fun with this one. It answers the "Bored Sherlock" Bingo card prompt on the Both Shows card at **land_deduction**. just a heads up: there is mention of an eating disorder in this fic, so if you find that triggering please avoid this story.

Both of the Sherlocks were lounging in their pyjamas in the sitting room of the brownstone. Irene had taken Joan out with her to do some shopping, leaving both the Sherlocks at home alone. It had been a cramped fit with four adults at the brownstone, even though Sherlock was only staying temporarily, so a day when it was just the two cousins was a rare event. 

“I'm bored,” Sherlock said with a sigh, lifting himself out of his chair and beginning to pace. Holmes was on the floor, his laptop on his lap. Sherlock moved over to his cousin and looked over his shoulder.

“That's annoying,” Holmes said without looking up. “You can always ask me what I'm doing.”

“But it's more interesting to observe,” Sherlock replied. “Now help me with my problem.”

Holmes went back to his laptop. “I don't want to play the deduction game, Sherlock, and I know that's what you want to do. Go call Joan and badger her into doing it.”

“She explicitly said not to be disturbed. Do you want her to be angry?” Sherlock asked.

Holmes paused in what he was doing again. “Not if I can help it,” he admitted. Then he sighed and closed his laptop. “Is there anything else we can do to relieve your boredom?”

“Nothing that doesn't involve a gun or a dead body,” he said as his cousin turned to face him.

Holmes raised an eyebrow. “You have some very strange interests, cousin.”

“Target practice and a case? I don't think that's so strange,” he said, moving back to his chair and flopping down in it.

“It's all in the way you phrased it,” Holmes said, moving his laptop to the table and standing up. He stretched for a moment and then turned to his cousin. “We need people to play the deduction scenarios with. Doing it with objects is no fun. That was always Mycroft’s preferred way, not mine.”

“There's always calling your friends to come by and doing it on them,” Sherlock said thoughtfully.

“I don't know how many of them would come, or how quickly,” Holmes pointed out. “They do have lives, after all.”

Sherlock thought for a moment, then sighed and hung his head. “Good point.”

Holmes moved around the room slightly. “We can make a contest of it. Go to the window and pick a random person for the other person to pick apart. We're both intelligent men who usually see the same things when looking at a person. The more accurate the guess is, the more points you get.”

“One point for every fact you catch?” Sherlock said, lifting his head up.

“Ten,” Holmes said. “Ten points. But if, say, I pick a person and you only give part of the facts I can fill in the rest for ten points each.”

“And what do we do with these points?” Sherlock asked, standing up.

“Whoever has the least has to pay for meals for the rest of the time you're here, no matter how much it costs,” he said with a grin. “For all four of us.”

Sherlock looked at him. “And what's to stop you from ordering everything on the menu?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Each person is limited to four items off a menu that cost money,” Holmes said with a grin. “Not counting drinks, if we choose to get them. If someone wants more they reimburse the loser for the cost.”

“I suppose I can agree to that,” Sherlock said after thinking a moment.

“Very well,” Holmes said, extending his hand. Sherlock took it and they shook on it. “I think the last time we played this game we were eight years old and I won.”

“I'll make sure I win the game this time,” Sherlock said as he moved over to the window. Holmes joined him after a moment. “You pick first.”

He studied the people walking in front of the brownstone. A woman had paused, waiting for her dog to do its business. “The woman in the red hat.”

Sherlock looked at her. “She’s professional model who is starving herself for her next big shoot. She would normally have someone else walk her dog but she’s a bit tight on money right now and the jobs just aren’t coming in as frequently. She has an addiction problem, one to drugs. Probably cocaine, as she thinks it will help her lose weight. She’s on her way to the market to buy something to binge on, and the market is outside of her neighborhood so that her local grocer won’t realize she makes herself vomit everything she eats. And she’s engaged but she doesn’t wear her ring in public anymore, probably because she found it was costing her jobs.”

“You forgot the fact that she’s also a bit on the tipsy side right now,” Holmes said with a grin

Sherlock observed her again before she began to walk again. “Ten points for you, I suppose,” he said with a sigh.

“And fifty for you,” he said. “Your turn to choose.”

He studied the people outside before pointing. “The child in the horrid jumper.”

“That’s not a child. That’s a teenager. And the correct term is hoodie,” Holmes said.

“So one of your deductions is he’s a teenager?”

“Yes.”

“Eleven at most,” Sherlock said with a smirk.

“Thirteen at the youngest.”

“I can go out and ask,” Sherlock said as his smirk got wider.

“And you honestly don’t think someone will think it strange for a grown man clad only in pyjamas and robe goes out to talk to a young child?” Holmes said, raising an eyebrow. “If we’re going to argue about that simple deduction it’s not worth doing the rest. Pick someone else.”

Sherlock scanned the street and saw a man across the street trying to get across. “The man in the _hoodie_ across the street with the backward hat,” he said.

Holmes smiled a wide grin. “Mid-thirties, convicted criminal. Auto theft. He’s retired from it now but he used to be very good at what he did. Recovering addict, attends meeting on a regular basis. Has a very sarcastic wit at times but a very good person nonetheless. Loyal friend to those he chooses to place his trust in. Has a crush on Joan, I think, but she doesn’t feel the same way.”

“That’s cheating,” Sherlock said, narrowing his eyes.

“ _I_ didn’t choose him,” Holmes said with a smirk. “You did.”

Sherlock glared. “I refuse to play anymore,” he said with a slight pout.

Holmes chuckled. “Fine. I’ll even let it be declared a draw. But as it stands, I think your boredom might soon be relieved. Alfredo looks like he’s concerned, and that’s not his usual state of being. Go upstairs and get dressed while I let him in. For some reason it always takes you longer.”

“Fine,” Sherlock grumbled, turning away from the window as Alfredo finally started to cross the street. Holmes smiled to himself. If there was one thing in the world that could cure his cousin of boredom it was a case. He just hoped that was why Alfredo was paying him a visit, because if it wasn’t and he still had a bored Sherlock on his hands afterward he might just murder his cousin, and that would be a very bad thing indeed.


End file.
